The Adaptation Crosswalk

Adaptations are not summaries. The good ones take a premise, throw away the plot, and rebuild from the studs. The Winter Soldier keeps one idea from Brubaker and invents a political thriller around it. Logan is credited to a comic it barely touches.

The most common mistake a new reader makes is expecting the comic to be the film with more pages. It never is. You will open Civil War looking for airport choreography and find a seven-issue argument about civil liberties with nobody you care about at the center. Read the source for what it is: the ore, not the ring. This chapter says which ore each film was smelted from, and whether to read it before or after.

The master table

Fidelity is one of four words. Close means the plot survives. Loose means the shape survives and the details do not. Premise only means one idea was taken and the rest built new. In name only means the title is the only inheritance.

Status as of 3 August 2026.

MCU films

Disney+ series

Fox X-Men films

Sony Spider-Man films

Netflix Defenders

Animation

X-Men ’97 and the 1992 series

This is the adaptation most likely to have brought you here, so it gets the most space.

X-Men: The Animated Series ran 1992 to 1997 and did what no live-action film has tried. It adapted long Claremont arcs at length. The Phoenix Saga is a five-part run drawn from Uncanny X-Men #101-108. The Dark Phoenix Saga is four parts from Uncanny X-Men #129-138, and it keeps Jean’s death, which the 2006 and 2019 films both refused to earn. “Days of Future Past” is two episodes out of two comics, Uncanny X-Men #141-142. The Genosha material draws on Uncanny X-Men #235-238. The roster and costumes come from one place: Jim Lee’s relaunch, X-Men (1991) #1-3. That is why Cyclops has the shoulder pads and Jubilee is in the yellow coat.

X-Men ’97 premiered 20 March 2024, ten episodes, and picks up the 1992 show’s continuity directly. It then does what the parent series never did: it reaches forward twenty years and pulls in comics the 1992 writers had not read yet.

The pivot is episode 5, “Remember It.” Genosha is destroyed by Sentinels at a gala. That is Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, New X-Men #114-116, “E Is for Extinction,” where sixteen million mutants die in issue #115. The gala framing is not Morrison, though. It is the Hellfire Gala of the Krakoa era, twenty years later still. The show welds a 2001 massacre to a 2021 party and it works.

Around that spine sit older sources. Mister Sinister and his Marauders come from Uncanny X-Men #221 onward. Madelyne Pryor’s turn into the Goblin Queen is Inferno: Uncanny X-Men #239-243, X-Factor #36-39, New Mutants #71-73. Storm losing her powers to Forge’s weapon is “Lifedeath,” Uncanny X-Men #186. Bastion, revealed in episode 7 as the architect, comes from the 1997 Operation: Zero Tolerance, which the 1992 series never reached.

Season 2 premiered 1 July 2026, nine episodes, weekly through mid-August. Beau DeMayo was fired in March 2024 and still holds the season 2 writing credits; Matthew Chauncey takes over from season 3. The season scatters the team through time and puts Apocalypse in front, which points at X-Factor #5-6. Seasons 3 and 4 are planned.

If you loved the show, read in this order:

1. Uncanny X-Men #129-138. The Dark Phoenix Saga. Everything else is downstream.
2. Uncanny X-Men #141-142. Two issues. Read them in one sitting.
3. New X-Men #114-116. The Genosha episode’s actual source.
4. Uncanny X-Men #221-227. Mutant Massacre and Sinister’s arrival.
5. Uncanny X-Men #186. “Lifedeath.” Short, and the best single Storm issue.
6. X-Men (1991) #1-3. Not great comics. It is where the show’s look was born.

Logan

The credit reads “based on Old Man Logan.” The credit is close to a lie.

Old Man Logan is Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, Wolverine #66-72 plus Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size #1, 2008 to 2009. Its plot is a road trip across a villain-ruled America with a blind Hawkeye, a Venom-symbiote T-rex, and inbred Hulk children. Logan is pacifist because Mysterio tricked him into killing the X-Men. Almost none of that reaches the screen. The film keeps three things: an old Logan, a ruined future, and a drive across the country.

The film’s actual emotional lineage runs elsewhere.

Claremont and Miller, Wolverine #1-4, 1982. This is where Logan becomes a character rather than a set of claws. Four issues in Japan, a failed marriage of honor and rage, a man who says “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn’t very nice” and means it as an accusation against himself. Every quiet, exhausted beat in Logan is descended from this. It is a pinned hidden gem in this book for a reason.

The X-23 books. Laura Kinney is Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost. She first appears in NYX #3, 2004. Her origin is X-23: Innocence Lost #1-6 and X-23: Target X #1-6: a girl made from a damaged sample of Logan’s genome, raised as a weapon, trigger-scented into killing, escaping with a body count she did not choose. The film’s Laura is that character almost exactly. Then read All-New Wolverine #1-35 by Tom Taylor for the version where she takes the name and looks after someone smaller than herself, which is what the film’s third act is about.

So: Logan is Wolverine #1-4 for the tone, X-23 for the plot engine, and Wolverine #66-72 for the setting and the title. Read all three if you want. Read only Old Man Logan and you will get a splatter comedy where you expected a eulogy, then wonder what everyone was talking about. That is the mistake. Do not make it.

The MCU touchpoints

2008 to 2012. The MCU’s blueprint is not the classic Avengers. It is The Ultimates #1-13 and The Ultimates 2 #1-13 by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. The 2012 film’s shape, the team assembled by a government agency, and above all Nick Fury as a bald Black spymaster who looks exactly like Samuel L. Jackson, all come from there. Marvel drew Fury that way first and cast to match.

2013 to 2016. Iron Man 3 takes Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s Extremis, Iron Man (2005) #1-6, and keeps the actual premise: a weaponized biotech upgrade turns people into ordnance. Six issues, and the best Iron Man story of the century. The Winter Soldier takes one reveal from Ed Brubaker’s Captain America (2004) #1-9 and #11-14 and builds a wholly different conspiracy thriller around it. Read Brubaker after; the comic’s version is slower, sadder, and better. Civil War #1-7 gives the film a premise and nothing else. In the comic the registration act is real legislation with real casualties, Spider-Man unmasks on television, and the ending is a defeat.

2017 to 2019. Ragnarok is Planet Hulk, Incredible Hulk #92-105, spliced into Walt Simonson’s Thor #337-353. The Infinity Saga takes its structure from Infinity Gauntlet #1-6 and changes the motive completely. Comics Thanos does it to court Death, literally, as a gift. Film Thanos does it out of Malthusian conviction. Read the comic for the scale, not the character.

2021 to 2022. WandaVision is the best-sourced Disney+ series. Wanda’s children come from Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #1-12, and their unmaking from Avengers West Coast #51-52. The reality-rewrite is House of M #1-8. The suburban tragedy of a synthetic man building a family is Tom King and Gabriel Walta’s Vision #1-12, a pinned hidden gem and required reading before Vision Quest. Hawkeye is a near-transcription of Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye #1-22, dog included. Love and Thunder takes Gorr from Thor: God of Thunder #1-11 and Jane Foster’s Thor from Mighty Thor (2015) #1-23. Both comics are tragedies. The film is a comedy with a tragedy stapled to the end.

What is coming, and what to read now. Avengers: Doomsday arrives 18 December 2026, Avengers: Secret Wars on 17 December 2027, and both adapt Jonathan Hickman. The chain is: incursions in New Avengers (2013) #1-3, escalation through “Time Runs Out” in Avengers #35-44 and New Avengers #24-33, then Secret Wars (2015) #1-9, where Doom rules a stitched-together Battleworld as a god. Read those three, in that order, and you will be ahead of most of the audience. The 1984 Secret Wars #1-12 shares only the title and the Battleworld idea; read it for fun, not for preparation. The MCU X-Men film has Jake Schreier directing, Samara Weaving cast as Emma Frost, and a 2028 target. No source arc is announced, so read the two spines: Giant-Size X-Men #1 with Uncanny X-Men #94-143, and House of X and Powers of X #1-6 each.

What to watch alongside each era

One adaptation per era chapter. Watch it while you read, not instead of reading.

The adaptations that are better than the comic

Four firm picks.

Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Miles Morales spent seven years in comics being explained. The film simply shows him, and the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man issues it draws from are good without being this.

Logan (2017). Better than Old Man Logan, and it is not close. Millar wrote a stunt. Mangold wrote an ending.

Iron Man (2008). Better than any Iron Man comic published between 1991 and 2004. The Ellis Extremis run is the exception and it arrived after the film was already in development.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Abnett and Lanning’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2008) #1-25 is a solid cosmic war book. The film invented the thing everyone now means by “Guardians”, including Rocket’s grief and Drax’s literalism, and the comics have been copying it back ever since.

X-Men ’97 does not make this list, but only just. It is better than most of the 1990s X-books it draws on and worse than the Claremont and Morrison issues underneath them.